


Unspoken

by extremesoft



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Motorsport RPF
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, M/M, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Masturbation, Porn Watching, Self-Denial, Voyeurism, and kissing!, apart from that still what it says in the tags, briefly and in a nightmare but still take care, except for some vague feels yay!, masturbating with a pillow, mentions rape, oh dear jeepers me, or it's not explicit so i'll tag this just in case, trying to resolve feelings but only making them more complicated, yes you read it correctly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-10-16 00:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17539445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremesoft/pseuds/extremesoft
Summary: Neither of them still can for some reason break the sphere, show how far out of their depths they have drifted. Daniel never yells and Max never opens his eyes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned some time ago that I would like to explore the element of porn watching in an established arrangement (either relationship or plain fuckery) in story format at some point, and... well, this is actually not the end result I had in mind back then, but this is, uh, an end result of sorts nevertheless! Oh my dear idiot boys, why am I treating the pair of you so badly again :')
> 
> This scribble doesn't really have an actual timeline to it, but I keep placing this in my head somewhere in the first half of the 2017 season. But you, whoever you might be that goes forward to read this, are of course free to place this wherever you want. Again, I do hope that you'll all enjoy this - let me know if you did, and hit me with a shovel if you didn't :D :)

It’s not anything out of the ordinary, how close or distant the two of them are. There is nothing excessively affectionate in the way they act towards each other and the closeness is nothing excessive in its physicality either. Casual, friendly pats on shoulders, fist bumps, cheerful, plain smiles.

It’s not anything out of the ordinary; but they can't deny they are quite close for a pair of fierce racing drivers teamed up with each other, and they have - in their own separate silences - grown quite fond of telling the story of succeeding in the impossible to each other and to the rest of the world. How they just happen to get along almost exceptionally well, how they push each other to each and every limit and bring out the best in each other on the track, how they can sure have a laugh with each other yet race against each other without mercy only moments after. And while the other actually spending a moment or two in the other's hotel room just to casually hang out still isn’t perhaps the most natural thing to happen between them, they are at least way beyond their initial feelings of newness and certain reservedness; genuinely able to have a good time and talk the events of the past days through as well as relax and joke around.

So even now they are slouched on their different sides of a stiff, grey sofa in Max's room, in front of the television, like they have been a few times already. It’s exactly the kind of an airy, luxurious hotel room Max inhabits that makes both of them feel slightly awkward at times, when the amount of unused, unneeded space hits them in recurring waves; and Daniel’s is just as unsettling, feeling even more ridiculous in all its vastness whenever he’s there alone. They keep absent-mindedly scanning the television screen but only see a bright chaos, whatever it is it might be trying to show them not being nearly enough to stir their interest in any way.

“Is there nothing else on?” groans Daniel, exaggerating his boredom just the essential tad, and grabs the remote from its honorary place right between the pair of them. “This is bullshit.”

Daniel begins his polished performance of idle yet unbelievably rapid channel surfing before Max can give even a half of his lackadaisical consent to that. He clicks his way through the TV guide with the kind of speed that tells tales of him having spent a considerable amount of his life surfing on the waves of pixels and satellite signals, and yet he still manages to give his measured opinions - most of them consisting of the words “bull” and “shit” - of every single one of the programs that flash before their eyes before being replaced by something that’s gone equally quickly. And Max follows with chuckles and eyes that get restless and weary from the volley of exploding pictures and fluorescence before him;

until a breathy, desperate, familiar sound swimming through the air both punctures the bubble of Max’s listless lull, making him snap back to reality, and makes his innards curl up with unexpected and inexplicable embarrassment straight after.

“Aw _damn_ , mate, you’ve got _porn_ here!”

Oh _fuck_ \- fucking shit - of course, trust Daniel of all the people in the whole wide universe to trip over the fucking _porn_ \- isn't that just the thing to watch between mildly befriended teammates in a lukewarm yet amicable atmosphere, yeah, not at all, like, absolutely _dying_ of awkwardness.

Daniel laughs, both amused and overwhelmed and the high-pitched titter thus serving as a primitive reflex to try and help him cope and re-adjust. This is exactly the kind of shitty situation that he would joke about - and has joked about - in a group of friends, beers in hands and no meanings on tongues, and he finds himself being more confused than he would like to about not precisely knowing how to get out of this now that it happens. It would perhaps still all be different if it _was_ one of his closer friends he was with and they were in the pleasant state of soft merriness that always follows downing a couple of quality beers:

but it’s Max he’s having to deal with now and Max is eight years his junior and they have also drank nothing stronger than sparkling water and they are just way too sober and sharpened up for any of this crap, _fuck_.

“You watch this shit?” is the first thing that Daniel can bring himself to say, and he’s trying so hard to sound unfazed but realizes how profoundly pathetic and immature the question sounds as soon as it’s out of his system. Max may well be his junior but Max is not a fucking _child_ , Max is a fresh-faced young man around his twenties with an internet access and an unlimited amount of TV channels within his reach. Of course he watches porn. And Daniel watches porn. There is no denying that. The wet sounds of licking and the over-acted yet incredibly monotonous moans serving as the soundtrack to this unexpected scene make Daniel want to shift and slither with prickling discomfort; yet he’s also oddly hellbent to not let it show through how ungrounded the situation makes him feel.

Max starts by hesitantly stammering “I, uh…” as could be expected, and it makes Daniel almost regret saying anything at all and not skipping past the porn channel as lightning fast as all the others. But then a curtain of unmovedness that Daniel can’t quite match yet veils Max’s eyes and face and he glances at Daniel - a commendable gesture considering the circumstances. He shrugs despite his cheeks being flushed bright red, full of stoic defiance, and goes “well, if I’m being honest, don’t we all?”

And Daniel finds himself suddenly admiring that, admiring Max as an actual _person_ , the impenetrable ice in his eyes and the sharp edges of his mouth and his mind, the recklessness and risk in him. This is not what he expected, the maturity of Max coolly admitting all and equally committing Daniel with one simple sentence.

“I guess.”

It suddenly feels like a lawless battle of two unyielding wills. High stakes, illegal bets. Max manages to contain himself instead of collapsing into a bratty fit of giggles and Daniel must equal if not outdo him. Changing the channel would be the quitter’s choice. It would mean being the one more easily nonplussed. And Daniel isn’t quite aware of it himself but it almost feels like they have already sneaked past that point anyway, unnoticed, unasked, unvoiced. On the television screen a long-haired brunette fingers herself in high definition, looking thoroughly bored despite mewling a lot and making sure that her highly impractical nail extensions show properly.

Daniel puts the remote down and gives Max a swift sideways look, challenging him, challenging them both. He shifts in an automated movement, just an inch, trying to move everywhere at once with both his desperate will to conceal his stirring arousal and the inevitable, primal itch to give his alarmingly stiffening crotch a bit more room. Max is suckling on his bottom lip, eyes fixed on the television and not moving but somehow giving the impression now that he is in fact just as perplexed as Daniel, and just as set on concealing it. 

Daniel swallows thickly and the movement gets stuck in his throat. He can’t decide whether to stick to staring at the television - where the slightly glassy-eyed male half of the unlikely couple is about to get sucked by the unimpressed-looking brunette - or give in to himself and look to his right, where Max sits on the other end of the sofa, as far as it permits. He should leave, he really should excuse himself and leave Max alone to sort himself out, whatever there might exist to sort out at this stage, if there is anything to be sorted out in the first place.

But something raises its weighty head in him that makes all of this feel like a blurred, sinful dream. An allurement, an irresistible temptation to make use of this all, to play the game further. Daniel would like to think it’s purely about teasing Max, about seeing how far he can be taken and bent before he reaches the point where he can’t take a joke anymore, where he snaps in half. So Daniel forces himself to focus on that despite being vaguely unsure where the boundaries of mischief and actual acts of desire run now himself. He looks to his right. Max’s cheeks glow red. The brunette is efficient in her job.

“D’ you want to…”, Daniel starts, stops to swallow again and also to give Max a chance to escape the situation if he wants: the chance to cave before Daniel’s eyes, before Daniel.

Max keeps his gaze glued to the screen and his mouth tight. His left heel taps the carpet in an unsteady, slow rhythm. He can’t help the flick instantly turning him on, of course. There is no way around that and he can’t even begin to pretend to himself that he wouldn't want to do anything about it. But Daniel should really fucking _go_ first, why hasn’t Max told him to do so already, why hasn’t Daniel figured it out himself already, why haven’t they changed the channel, why is the air so hard to breathe in all of a sudden? The brunette is still sucking, loud and dramatic, her chin glistening with saliva. And Max feels like he has trapped himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating disaster, having to stick to his unimpressed attitude even further if he doesn’t want Daniel to see how forcefully this all is serving to throw him off balance, how violently this makes his head spin with how absurd it is and how the fact that it is _Daniel_ who he's in this mess with makes everything even worse.

The feeling lingers - a grey twirl of smoke and ash, stealthy and suffocating - that had it been anyone else but Daniel there with him, they would have been able to laugh it off and change the channel ages ago already.

“Dude. Shouldn’t you-” begins Max and doesn't know how to continue from there. _Shouldn't you kindly fuck off before I jerk myself off to this shit, wouldn't it be just a little bit weird if you sat right there next to me through it? Doesn't it sound the slightest bit fucked up to you?_

And Daniel should and it really does. He really should and it really does. He knows the questions without Max finishing them, he knew the questions when Max hadn't even started thinking about them yet, and he sure as hell knows the only answer to them both that is still within the limits of sensible. But something possesses him that makes him want to test and take Max even further, test and take _them_ even further and beyond, the two stubborn and strong-willed daredevils; the itch to see which one of them is the one to call the game quits first, who is the one not able to take a _joke_ all the way from the beginning to the end. The weaker one.  
“Nothing I haven't done myself, y’ know”, he reasons out loud, only vaguely realizing it himself, the words come from somewhere outside of him.

“You’re not-”

 _serious_ , would Max like to say, but the rest of his words fail him yet again and he can say nothing. The man in the flick is apparently called Yeah. 

It fights against every single one of Max’s instincts, against the will of every single one of his nerve endings that scream in an inharmonious choir how everything about this is strange and wrong; and he’s not sure himself whether the contrasting, foolish bravado flaring in him is aimed more at himself or at Daniel. He slowly brings his right hand to his side, on the waistband of his jeans, lets it hesitate there, fingers making fluttering movements by their own will. This isn’t really going to happen, is it? Daniel will soon burst out in one of his trademark hysterical laughs and discharge the wildly wailing, stinging electricity that has replaced all air in the room with it, right? Daniel will not try to take him even further from here, will he?

In the film the man’s trousers have disappeared from the picture but the woman has unsurprisingly opted to keep her high heels on. The man is trying to find a good position for them to fuck in so that every detail of their shaved anatomy is as fully on display as possible and he also won’t encounter the clitoris even by accident.

“No shame in it”, encourages Daniel, now for some reason absolutely hungry to see this through, see where it is that Max finally breaks. His glances at Max grow more and more frequent, like small licks of his gaze on Max’s neck and chest. The edges of jokes and desires grow thin and muddled, and if Daniel could handle pausing to think about it for a moment, he would find himself being irreversibly unsure about whether it’s the porn or the situation itself that arouses him more, which one it is that is rapidly making him harden as well. It is as if he was trying to shield himself from the thought of it being the situation itself because the _situation_ very much involves Max and the porn _doesn’t_. “You can if you feel like it.”

 _God_ what the fuck is he saying, and in a tone that sounds all too low and lust-coated even in his own ears now, shit, it’s not as if he’s trying to fucking _seduce_ anyone here, is it -

is it?

Max shoots one more quickly passing glance in Daniel’s direction from the corner of his eye, not daring to turn his head at all, and closes his eyes. The grunts and panting from the television ring in their ears and make everything feel ridiculously unreal; it’s like a mere wet dream they are just happening to have simultaneously, waking up drenched in sweat and their boxers warm with stains afterwards, at the same time and unaware of each other. Daniel follows Max and casts a hex on himself, his eyes are fixed on Max instead of the porn, wide open and all-consuming. Yet when Max stays still for a moment, doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t open his mouth to speak, it momentarily hits Daniel whether this is Max’s way of telling him that they are over the lines and Daniel really should vanish with all of his weird fucked-upness -

and then Max slowly moves his right hand again. He guides it from his side to his front, lets it rest on the waistband and ghost above the button.

Daniel’s head floods and overflows with shrill, uncontrollable static. Is Max fucking going to go _through_ with this? What the hell is happening, if it’s really happening at all; and why is Daniel so helplessly keen to follow this all the way to the final all of a sudden, no matter whether it is real or woven by his imagination? He can’t wrap his head around anything anymore but how badly he wants to see where this is going to go, at which point the crash happens. He tries to fend off the useless, unneeded, _unwanted_ parts of him that are trying to tell him that this could in some way be about Max himself.

“Nothing I haven’t done myself”, he repeats hoarsely in a feeble attempt to stay conversational, soothing, to keep the situation within the boundaries of what he knows. And he knows that he is lying; it kind of _is_ something he hasn’t done himself because not a single one of his own god-damned _teammates_ have ever been present. He feels both blindingly numb and like he is being eaten alive by a fire, his own cock yearns to be touched now and the pain of it shooting through him crucifies him with smudged mortification. The couple on the television still hasn’t changed their angle. The man keeps ramming the woman with well-practiced repetitiveness.

Daniel has to bite his lip to not sigh out loud when he sees Max’s fingers stretching to hover over the curvature his erection creates, still hesitant, still weighing what’s unspoken. Daniel toils to will away the thought that if he was anywhere nearer his right mind he would be alone in his own room now, watching the flick and getting himself off to it in peace and solitude instead of barely watching it anymore in Max’s room and being pulled into this hopeless, dark spiral of lust, watching Max instead, taking in Max’s closed eyes, plump lips, strong hands, tight jeans. And then Max slowly lays his palm down and his hips twitch, and _fuck_ how the reflex resonates in Daniel’s cock and makes it jerk as well, _God_. Daniel really has to chew his lip now to not make a sound, to not break the spell, and his own hand restlessly travels to the front of his jeans as well without a say-so, testingly cups the damp bulge there.

Max clearly can’t bring himself to be any more patient than he normally is; and he doesn't dare to open his eyes, still partly waiting for Daniel to yell something like _what the fuck are you doing, mate_ at any given moment. He lifts his left hand as well, tries to fumble the button open and succeeds after a couple of botched attempts. The sharp sound of the zipper being opened cuts the air, and the sensation of it makes Max’s body flinch again and the sound of it makes Daniel’s breathing stop still. But neither of them still can for some reason break the sphere, show how far out of their depths they have drifted. Daniel never yells and Max never opens his eyes.

Max clutches his jeans and boxers with his left hand and tugs the fistful of bunched up fabrics just barely out of his way. Daniel has forgotten all about the porn by now yet still doesn't realize it himself, the theatrical sounds of it reduced to nothing more than white noise on the farthest rims of his consciousness. Max grabs himself and Daniel can’t help staring, eyes wide ajar and insatiably thirsty for it. Max’s cock is swollen and reddened and glistening in his fist, somehow _eager_. Daniel palms himself through his own slacks with sluggish and scatter-brained strokes, his cock greedily pressing against his shaking hand. He shoves away the image of touching Max by touching himself instead, having to work his zipper open painfully slowly to still not make any noise.

Everything about this is nothing but forbidden and Daniel can’t think about it at all, how hungrily he really is staring at Max instead of the flick, how badly the sight of him is making him burn inside, how damp his own boxers feel when he roughly gropes himself through the opening of his pants. Max’s moves are something that Daniel vaguely thinks of as determined; he presses the pad of his thumb to the slit on the tip and his hips snap up from the sofa, he spreads the gushing wetness over the crown, then moves his palm to slide it all the way down to the base, slick and easy. Daniel drags the edge of his tongue over his lip unknowingly, trying to spread moisture when there is nothing to spread, his lips and mouth feeling equally dry, flame-kissed. He moves in a trance, doesn't even look at what he's trying to do when he blindly fiddles to open his trouser button.

Max gives himself a couple of slower pulls at first, like in unsure preparation, like _foreplay_ on himself, but the movement soon quickens and grows steadier, near vigorous. Air bursts from his lungs in pointed, quiet gasps now and it’s almost like he had forgotten all about Daniel still being present; but his eyes still remain tightly shut, and he can't bring himself to check the status of the reality around him. The noises Max makes, shallow and anxious, blend with the ones coming from the television into a cacophony of panting and breaths and wet slapping that sounds oddly empty and distorted in the middle of the _silence_ that Daniel makes. Daniel slips his hand underneath his slacks and boxers, beneath the layers of fabrics that are all too messy for him to be proud of himself. He has been biting his own lip so hard to stay quiet that it feels sore and pulsates to his feverish heartbeat, and the tip of the blade of the taste of blood etches a mark on his tongue.

It has never felt so inherently wrong to touch himself yet Daniel can’t bear the thought of stopping at this point anymore. He swallows back an almost panicked gasp with effort, thrusts reflexively against his own hand, into the funnel of his own fingers. Max looks so angelic, a hallow being in the halos the pale lights coil around him, with his pale skin and reddened lips that part with a voiceless hymn of lust. And Daniel feels like he's nothing but pure sin, a demon that has gotten them to where they are now, staged them like that, driven them both to the precipice of madness. Daniel jerks himself fast now, trying with all of his strength to not whimper and grunt as he feels the glints of heat starting to pool and change their shapes in his gut, and he glimpses Max's cock tightening his hand and his body jolting nervously in a way that tells Daniel that he can't be far from climaxing either. He still can’t fathom the reality that this hasn't been about getting off to the shitty porn in a while. If it ever was.

The muscles in Max's thighs visibly clench and sharpen, his cock is dark red in the depths of his fist, fingers glimmering and covered with his own fluids. And he caves right before Daniel's eyes, before Daniel, rips himself open while keeping himself completely closed off. He only comes with a short, shuddering groan, nothing like the commotion in the flick just a fraction earlier; Daniel watches on in a state of utter shock, eyes nailed to the details of the white lace that braids itself in between Max's fingers and on his jeans. And he can't help himself anymore as his own peak is upon him a heartbeat later. All of him shatters when he comes in his own boxers, spills all over his palm, the warmth of the slick stains melts his skin and flesh like acid. And he forgets to dig his teeth through his bottom lip this time, Christ, he can't stop the 

_Max-_  
that escapes him

  
and it breaks when he speaks the name  


the sphere

  
  
Max's eyes fly wide open

  
he snaps in half  


  


and they crash when Max's shimmering eyes fall on Daniel's and expose the extremities of the abyss of their sin to him.  


Both the waves of his orgasm and the waves of horror and shame crash over and through Daniel and his lungs inflate with a cold gale whenever he tries to breathe in. He can do nothing but stare for a moment - and neither can Max - and they sink in each other's wide, panic-pierced eyes, chests that heave heavily to the same distressed tempo. The television screen goes blank and black before the ending credits start their sluggish journey across it.

Daniel makes what feels like the only true quitter’s choice yet the only choice there is. He turns his gaze from Max as if the sight of him was suddenly burning his eyes all the way to their sockets, stumbles to his heavy feet, wipes his trembling hand on the side of his trousers, and storms out of the room without uttering another word; he's not able to bear the sight of Max, the sound of Max breathing, the scent and air of Max, the reality. He falls on his bed as soon as he has gotten back to his own room and slammed the door shut with unnecessary force and a loud bang, not having the brains to get out of his spoiled trousers and boxers yet. He turns to his back and fixes his eyes on the ceiling, as if he could come across redemption or mercy there, flings an arm over his forehead.

Cold sweat covers all of him and his pants feel more and more disgusting with every second that passes, gluey and cooling. The usual ripples of pleasure are not there to be felt even though he is still shaking to the rhythm of his own pulse and panting with the aftermath of it all, both physical and mental. And he dreads the next time he will be forced to see Max eye to eye, he dreads the next quizzing message Max will send him, he dreads himself, he dreads above all that Max will turn up behind his door and with a knock and a weakly called _Daniel_ will make him face all of the things between them that just a few twists and turns ago weren't anything out of the ordinary.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't plan on continuing this further. I sure didn't. But then I got a couple of comments to this that said that it would be interesting to read about how the situation develops, and I wanted to vent my work-related stress and frustration by writing something porny (which of course is a coping mechanism beyond all), and then the ideas just popped into my head, and now I'm here with... this. Let's just say that tagging this made me slightly embarrassed this time :'D Although this is still perhaps not as much porny as it is... weird.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is necessary, but a fair warning to those prone to getting anxious easily: this chapter describes all kinds of uncomfortable feelings, distress and panic and self-denial in addition to hideous awkwardness, in a way that can feel quite intense, so read with exactly the amount of caution you need ❤️
> 
> (Whyyy can't I write even about masturbating without it turning into a angsty chaotic twisted mammoth of a story jdjhdjh :'DD)

They don't talk about it, of course.

Max never sends Daniel the quizzing message. He never turns up behind his door, he doesn't knock, not once does he call out Daniel's name. Daniel spends the rest of that night in a smothering fog, everything in his vision suddenly twists and turns unreal and distant. He is not sure whether he gets any sleep that night. Or the nights that follow.

And the worst to Daniel is that Max appears _almost normal_ afterwards. Just. As if there still hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, nothing at all, simply the universe itself having derailed for a moment and then returning to its place as swiftly as it shifted. It inexplicably chills Daniel to the marrow and he does wonder for recurring snaps of time whether anything truly ever happened; but there is an unfamiliar breeze of cold air that Max seems to inhale now whenever they notice each other on the paddock, freezing his features at once, sharpening his eyes and making his voice blunt. Max doesn't pat Daniel's shoulder or squeeze his upper arm when he shoots past him in the garage, his laugh is shorter and words cut clean. They speak to each other and yet they don't, they laugh with each other and yet they are quiet.

Daniel, being who he is, outward and jovial by nature for most of his existence, can’t take the increased distance for too long despite full well knowing his part in the birth of the uneasy rift. The grey twirl of smoke and ash has exploded into a heavy, black cloud that hangs solid between them and burns Daniel’s skin to blisters whenever he tries to reach Max through it. The more he breathes it in, the more it thickens. He carries his confusion with him for a night, then a day, then a week, and it remains unexpressed and tangled; but not two weeks pass before he reaches the point where it overflows and he finds himself knocking on Max’s door.

It's a different country, different hotel, different reality. Daniel’s insides churn with the need to apologize and the equally compulsive need to do a perfect one-eighty and flee wrestling in his gut and making him want to resolve everything by simply vomiting it out on the carpeted floor.

Max opens the door and then stops to stay put. He says nothing. His expression says nothing. Daniel briefly wonders whether he should stick to saying nothing as well; but another silence would be the quitter’s choice and having taken the quitter’s choice once is already one time too many for him. He can’t afford the second. He is already the one that broke first when he least expected for it to happen to _him_.  
“Hi”, Daniel begins and doesn’t know how to continue from there. _I'm so sorry for somehow talking you into wanking while I was sitting right there next to you through it, so sorry, cross my heart. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that I ended up watching you instead of the porn and jerked myself off to it? Sounds extremely weird and fucked up, now doesn’t it?_

“Sorry for disturbing”, he utters once the door closes again behind him, instead of everything that rockets through his head, in an attempt to coax a reaction out of Max, trying to interpret him yet feeling like he is in fact attempting to break through a wall of concrete - and that the latter would also probably be way easier.  
“No, it’s good that you’re disturbing, actually”, says Max as a diluted, flavorless non-greeting, with a voice that doesn’t say anything either. It’s as if he was wearing a mask, his jeans and t-shirt and cap solely a disguise. Nothing is betrayed by anything about him. Not by his face, not by his words, not by his essence.  
“I have been kind of waiting for you to say or do something for almost two weeks.”  
“Yeah, I don’t blame you for that. Look, I want to apologize for myself”, Daniel continues and then hits another dead end in his chase for things to say. The sheer sight of Max now wakes a strange itch underneath his skin, his bones themselves slither with the discomfort and awkwardness and he suppresses an urge to grimace uglily.  
“I really do. I have no idea or actual explanation to what happened back then, I dunno, I certainly was a weird jerk and I feel like I kinda drifted out of myself momentarily or something. And I just-”

He keeps scratching the back of his head and combing his curls with his fingers and trying to keep his mouth running without either throwing up or making things even worse.  
“I want to apologize and move forward and forget about it, if you’re on board with it as well”, he stutters and finds he dislikes himself more and more with every scrambled word that comes out of him and how cowardly and daunted they make him sound. “You’re honestly a good bloke and so far I’ve very much liked having you as a teammate and a friend”,

_oh, so he’s likeable and a friend now - well, I guess he kind of is, or has been this far at least, fuck, stop it,_

“and I’d like to keep it that way. If I didn’t fuck up too badly for that. I’m extremely ashamed of myself and for being such a sorry chicken and I apologize, again.”

Max bites his lip and holds his muteness for a moment longer. There is nothing that's visible in him. No anger, no explicit disappointment, no grief, no acceptance. He simply keeps blankly staring at Daniel and Daniel keeps staring back at him and they are oddly stagnant and charged, two alpha wolves meeting where their territories cross, both ready to attack on any given impulse; and Daniel can’t hide from the inkling that he could keep talking for hours on end yet all of the things between them would still stay where they now are, out of the ordinary.  
“What do you want from me?” asks Max, never shifting his eyes away.

The question almost throws Daniel off his feet, as if Max had placed the words on his chest and shoved him with them. _What the fuck, there’s nothing I want_ is what naturally comes to Daniel’s mind first, and it’s ready to swim to his tongue and out of his mouth when it suddenly gets overthrown and replaced by a pushy _I don’t know_ and he has to quickly swallow it back and choke on it.  
“I want nothing, okay”, Daniel lies nevertheless. Not knowing now equals not wanting in his flimsy logic; it sounds easier to voice and it seems easier for him to handle that way. “Let's not… Just let's not go there anymore, right. We're a good team and I don't want to ruin anything. Let’s forget about this the best we can and move on.”

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Another quietude, another moment of the two men drilling holes through each other with their eyes, for Daniel another uncomfortable wave of realizing that he indeed _doesn’t fully know_ what he is after with Max now, not any longer. The more he looks at Max, the less he knows.

Max shrugs and breaks out of his part of the spell.  
“Okay, if you say so”, he replies: but Daniel still can’t tell if he truly relents or even agrees. And then Max loses Daniel completely by nodding sternly and saying “if you can do that, I will do it as well.”

_If? If you can- I will-_

_What?_

"Right", complies Daniel nevertheless, despite not fully knowing what exactly he is consenting to. "Sounds reasonable enough. I do like you, y' know, you're a decent bloke, and I'm glad if we can move past this without a bigger mess. I don't want there to be any unnecessary- uh, tension between us."

Max nods again and cracks a thin smile, but the persistent pensiveness leaves neither him nor Daniel. If anything, the unnecessary tension laughs mockingly at them and multiplies.

Daniel doesn’t stay to hang out. Max does ask him to - again a commendable gesture considering the circumstances, but it’s meaningless and lukewarm and Daniel excuses himself equally half-heartedly. Daniel drags himself to his own room only a short while later, and his feet are reluctant and steps unwilling. Trying to untangle the unexpected mess and anchor the universe tighter to its tracks seems to have not only left everything more knotted up but also derailed the reality again and bent and snapped the tracks as well.

_If you can do that, I will do it as well?_

_What the hell does he mean by that?_

Daniel closes the weighty door slowly behind him and stops to stand in the middle of his room, and it appears horrendously eerie in its airiness all of a sudden. The itch of discomfort and awkwardness has wilily followed in his wake through the corridors and sneaked inside the room and inside him; it worms in his flesh in a way that makes plain existing hard with him not knowing how to scratch it away - how to be, what to do, what he would _want_ to do. The overwhelming indecisiveness feels like the first steps towards awaiting insanity. He saunters up to the glassy coffee table, grabs the remote automatedly and opens the television - he glances at the television, stares at it for five seconds and sees nothing, then closes it again.

The screen returns black and empty and he catches his own reflection from the weakly shimmering surface, smudged and dimensionless, surreal. It stares quietly back at him and an unexplainable urge to look away overpowers him. The low, monotonous hum of the air-conditioning only serves to make the force of the silence more evident with how helpless it is to mask it.

It quickly occurs to him whether this could be close to something Max felt then.

He nearly flinches at the notion and then toils to bat it away from the surface of his thoughts. He moves to conceal the room from the world outside with the slats of the curtains and then walks up to the bed, crashes onto it and grabs his phone. He checks his Twitter and the short words won't stay still in his vision long enough for him to make them out. He checks his Instagram and the pictures only mix into a colourful abstract painting with no outlines and nothing to cling to. His gut feels oddly empty. He turns the screen off.

He tested Max for no sensible reason whatsoever, tested them both. Drove Max straight to the edge of madness for the sake of his own selfish, depraved, witless whim. Tried to see which one would be the one to cave and fracture first, the one not able to take a _joke_ , and it was still him in the end. The weaker one. Then.

He turns the phone screen back on with wavering yet renewed decisiveness, opens an incognito tab in the web browser and speedily navigates to a relatively sleazy yet virus-free proven site he has been to every now and then for no greater purpose than momentary reliefs. Mostly in hotel rooms, a couple of times in his driver room in the pits or in whatever men's room he has managed to occupy, once or twice in an airplane. Cock in hand, indifference in eyes, no meanings in mind.

And right there, in _meanings_ , is where the difference now lies.

It has never felt so inherently wrong to scroll through elaborate titles such as _Horny MILF takes eleven huge cocks at ONCE_ and _Wet amateur fucks EVERYTHING that moves_ , they bounce in and out of Daniel’s comprehension like mere intrusive thoughts. He stops idly stroking the screen after a while and the pad of his thumb is left to hover over a thumbnail that portrays an open-mouthed brunette, big, beautiful, brown eyes loaded with layers of makeup and false lashes, staged all ready for someone nameless and faceless to spill their come over her pink-tinted lips and flushed cheeks.

His stomach turns with something not far from pure nausea. _Fuck_ , what _is_ it that is making this shit so difficult this time, just get over it and watch it, the girl's fuckable, press play, it's only a fucking porno.

And yet underneath it still linger the _meanings_. He doesn't yet think about it at all, he can't bring himself around handling it like he perhaps should; but it is all rapidly growing into nothing but proving himself to himself above all. Showing himself that he is able to forget precisely like he wanted to, like he pleaded Max to do, and come out on top after all. He can move on.

Daniel slams a jittery finger on the thumbnail. The flick goes straight to the point without unnecessary introductions and proceeds to show the brown-eyed woman on an ugly and uncomfortable-looking leather armchair. Her legs seem to be spread as wide as their physique allows, her hand is rutting in an unsteady rhythm between them, and she keeps mewling breathily over the slow tempo of the banal background music.

Daniel swallows and swallows and swallows, as if desperately trying to contain the distress rising in him like a tide of bile, and he can't bring himself to fixate on any details of the clip. It's a different brunette in this one and it could still be the same brunette he last saw that pleasures herself on the screen for the pleasure of the viewer first and foremost. Long hair, high heels, highly impractical nail extensions absent-mindedly clawing the reddened labia. Daniel feels an odd slither of weakness and closes his eyes for a moment. The sounds of the video instantly cram themselves in his ears and gush over, every lush moan the woman makes is more like a scream when what shows is nothing but the distorted, luminous blackness of the backs of Daniel’s own eyelids.

Daniel opens his eyes once more, gulps thickly again, forces himself to focus on the screen, forces himself to try to feel something, something other than panicked and wrong, anything. He pauses the video after a minute and a half, goes back and chooses another one, this time with a blonde, and fuck, it still seems like the exact same girl and the same meaningless flick over and over again. Long hair, high heels, nail extensions, the same high-pitched sounds that echo in the hollow of Daniel’s head, it's all the same, all the same; and Daniel _tries_ to immerse himself in it like his life depended on it but somehow only distances himself all the more, it's as if he was trying to learn to love water by holding his head below the surface until filling with it and drowning. He tries frantically to avoid closing his eyes this time, he starts wishing he didn’t need to blink at all: that way lies what he is set to banish.

He pauses the video. The enthusiastic actress on the screen is left with her mouth open and eyes closed in an expression that would make Daniel burst out in a laugh if it wasn’t for him feeling so completely disintegrated and trapped, a bewildered animal in a luxurious prison, blindly trying to escape with nowhere to go and no haven to be found. He turns the screen off and the sudden silence bellows around him. He turns the screen back on, then off again, circles his cage, restless and lost. On, off.

He shuts his eyes. His mind itself twitches.

It is already beginning, uninvited, unavoided, making its way in without him ever allowing. The figure looms on the edges of his senses and Daniel can’t bear to wonder whether it has loomed there all along while he has been trying to distract himself with more acceptable replacements to it. The kind he can accept himself, beyond all. He opens his eyes again and still it snakes there, sticking to his imagination now and conquering it inch by inch, slow but ever overpowering.

Daniel could cry yet nothing stirs behind his eyes except the unwilled. His jaw clenches, he grits his teeth, it’s for nothing. He closes his eyes once more and upon the luminous blackness he projects an image. An icon of a hallow being amidst the halos the pale lights coil around him. And Daniel’s hand is slow to move, almost as if it was trying to cling to the last ripples of resistance left in him when his mind has already let them drift away, and it stops on his lower abdomen for a moment, unnerved and unsure- as if he was being _watched. Still hesitant, still weighing what’s unspoken, fingers making fluttering movements by their own will._ The thought spears through him and renders him bare and goes, leaving behind a ghost, a memory, shame.

He bites his lip and slides his hand further down and a choked sob shakes him when the touch meets the partly stretched, dampened front of his trousers. He gives himself a couple of rough strokes with the heel of his palm through the fabrics, rolls his hips and slowly grinds against his own hand-

_closed eyes, plump lips, strong hands, tight jeans_

Daniel grunts impatiently at himself and gets to fumbling his slacks open wantonly, out of the way, fuck, get out of the way already-! He rips the zipper down and digs his cock out of his boxers in a sudden frenzy, involuntarily gasps at the wet feeling, and how thoroughly undignified it makes him feel gradually disappears under how he aches for it now. He gives himself a sluggish pull, two, three, faster, spreading the pre-come all over his length and the movements easing and quickening with every jerk. And _God_ , it’s still not enough, nothing is enough, he craves exhaustion, beastliness, breathlessness, as if consuming and spending himself could somehow be an equivalent to an exorcism. He grunts again and stills his hand, it is covered in his fluids already but he couldn’t be less bothered about the mess he is going to make as he hastily squirms out of both his trousers and boxers at the same go.

_swollen and reddened and glistening in his fist, somehow eager-_

Daniel is so far taken by his outlawed fantasy he can’t focus on anything anymore but this, his want, his illicit release, his unlikely redemption. It is still inherently wrong in every possible way and he can’t bring himself to coil his head around the depths of it, not now, he can’t bear even a fleeting premonition of the regret bound to slay him afterwards. He turns around, quickly climbs on all fours and grabs one of the large, stiff decorative pillows from the head of the bed.

_Nothing I haven't done myself, y’ know._

And he is in search of redemption yet now feels nothing but endlessly sinful when he presses his cock against the side of the pillow in despair and closes his eyes. He gasps, bucks his hips forward, the coarseness of the fabric enhances the effect of the friction, and the pillow yields slightly under him but stays in its form well enough for him to start rutting against it without collapsing. His own cock leans and slides filthily against his stomach and it feels even dirtier, the slickness and the throbbing that feel like they are trying to impale his own abdomen, the greed of his own demands. And the images flood to him almost unprompted, woven by his imagination now yet raw and fleshy, vivid like memories. In the place of the pillow there is a body underneath him that takes what he gives, lithe yet enduring, flushed with a rush of blood yet heavenly pale. Daniel breathes loudly, fucks roughly into who he pictures with him there on the king-sized bed, crafts all the details, takes what he has _witnessed_ already even further -

what he could feel like, stubborn and unyielding at first but welcoming Daniel one quivering muscle at a time, thrust by thrust - what he could sound like, sharp and choked, moaning with pleasure, wailing with pain - what he could look like with Daniel touching him instead of he merely touching himself,

_closed eyes, plump lips- angelic, a hallow being-_

And Daniel’s peak starts to build in the blackest of his abysses, it licks its way to the heart of him from his extremities and coats him with a thin layer of tingling sweat; his t-shirt glues to his chest in a way that makes him think of a second skin, pressed against his own and melting into it, rib cage crashing against rib cage with every forceful pound-

“Max, _fuck_ -”

It feels as if Daniel’s whole body was convulsing violently with his orgasm, the impact taking him to the point of annihilation and beyond, the burning pinnacle that follows his breathless words serving as a feeble, spluttered absolution. He goes rigid and exhales a quiet groan and inevitably makes even worse a mess of his own stomach, and his own mind, and the pillow that has turned from coarse and sturdy to wet and flattened and sickening. He stops, inhales, compels air to move. And his ears ring with his own ragged gasps and the ones he imagines. He brings them together in his head, listens to the hymn of lust they blend into.

His strained arms then give in and he falls limply to his side, having a physical body suddenly feeling like an unbearable burden. And it is only once he stops still when he finds how uncontrollably he is trembling. His breathing is erratic and doesn’t seem to want to grow steady at all and the little remnants of air he manages to get in only razor his lungs.

What has he-

what-

no, no, he can’t ask himself what he has done. It would mean needing to face the rawness of the true answer as well.

Daniel clumsily stretches his leg to kick the ruined pillow as far away from him as he can, and it rolls heavily over before falling to the floor with a muffled, discontent thump. He still finds no satisfaction in having gotten it out of his sight, and the ripples of his pleasure seem to be irreversibly mixed with condemnation and shame now. The sweat sticks to his skin and cools rapidly and makes his sides explode in goosebumps; he gives in to the reflex of hastily pulling both of the fluffy eiderdown duvets over him and curls up into a lump under them, shivering with the sudden chill that has ruthlessly replaced his heat and mortified loneliness that feels irredeemable.  


  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew okay. I can't believe this. Started this shitstorm in January, didn't plan on continuing, ended up turning this into a trilogy that's basically all about wanking and porn. What the hell. Sigh. What was it that I said about needing to re-think my life and choices nice and hard? :'D  
> OH, also, forgive me for rambling. Please do heed the warning I already presented in the tags, about the rape thing - it's nothing explicitly described and it's, as stated, only a figment of Daniel's strained imagination. But what it also is is a trigger, so please, take care when reading the scene in question if need be, and take care of yourself! :3
> 
> This last chapter I dedicate to **Charona** , who in fact deserves so much more than this, who has cheered me on in ways completely beyond me and just... has been colossally awesome here. Thank you for everything, fräulein Waschbär, you've really done so much more than what this scribble is worth! ❤️
> 
> As always: this whole thing is really nothing but utterly weird and all that, but I still do sincerely hope you have enjoyed and will enjoy reading this! Thank you for all your feedback, comment or kudos, you all really are more than I deserve ❤️

Daniel somewhat tolerates himself and his own weaknesses - above all his sudden, loathsome inability to be true to both Max and himself - for another few weeks. Yet this time he finds himself wishing that Max would stop touching him again, for the love of God, quit patting his shoulder or squeezing his upper arm whenever he shoots past him in the garage. Every brief gesture of Max’s renewed, re-invented friendliness now spikes Daniel with indistinct pain he has never imagined he could feel. And it’s the law of nature, of course, that the more Daniel tries to avoid his own inconvenient want, the more the true extent of it makes itself known to him whenever it manages to seep through the floodgates of his mind.

Daniel keeps repeating to himself it’s about Max testing him this time, all the small, nonchalant touches and quirky smiles. About seeing where it is that Daniel snaps in half and can't take his own joke anymore. And Daniel is achingly determined to hold together like he himself wished; yet more than that he is hopelessly destined to fail, the will to _forget about this the best we can and move on_ regularly losing its battles against his growing, inexplicable yearning. He rebuilds himself after every single lapse of his already spent composure and tries and tries to steer clear of what he still stubbornly refuses to identify as desire;

but once his own head finally drives him to and over the precipice and he has a nightmare where he takes Max by force (once he wakes up from it with his eyes smouldering with tears, the faint phantom images of the blood quietly dripping down Max's thighs, the revolting bruises adorning his hips of crystal and ice having burnt themselves to the backs of Daniel’s eyelids, still making his stomach turn and clasp so painfully it makes him growl in agony) he knows that they will both have to face it, whatever the outcome. He can not keep bottling it up without inevitably succumbing to the insanity that at moments feels like it is already lying in wait for him.

But what the fuck- what the actual _fuck_ is he supposed to say to Max? How is he ever supposed to excuse himself and find a way out for both of them without completely destroying them, without evaporating everything that wavering words like _a good bloke_ and _teammate and a friend_ held in them? _Yeah, here’s a funny story: I reckon I kinda boned a fucking pillow imagining it was you and then later on I had a nightmare where I forced myself on you, and I guess all that means that I wasn’t quite able to get over what happened earlier - anyway, how’ve you been, mate, any news?_

He slouches on a soft chair on his own balcony and stares at the playful lights of the blue, velvety evening, idly listens to the lazy flow of his playlist that now seems to be repeating the same dull beats over and over and over again to the walls of his apartment ( _it's all the same, all the same_ ). At moments he finds himself trying to instinctively listen to any sounds that might be audible from Max's flat downstairs. He feels a heavy wave of embarrassment every time he catches himself from the act - what would he hear of Max gaming, unless he threw the hissy fit of the century, and what could he possibly hear in case Max isn't even in - yet isn’t really willing enough to stop it either. He takes the third long sip from his rapidly warming beer and can’t even properly taste it over the tangy flavour of fear filling the back of his throat.

 _If you can do that, I will do it as well_. What about the other option, the one they left unspoken - what will Max do if Daniel can’t forget and move on like he so _bravely_ intended? What will he do if he finds out that it was Daniel who lost the lawless battle he arranged himself?

When he finds out?

Daniel is in the middle of a hurriedly escalating disaster, crafted by he himself, triggered by he himself. Soon to be ended and silenced by he himself. He takes the fourth sip, places the bottle on the table with a small chink and fishes his phone out of his trouser pocket with shaking hands.

_Hiya, @ home?_

Grey marks. Three minutes. Blue marks. Typing. 

_Yeah, come if you want_

Max is downstairs. Max is downstairs. Max is right downstairs. Daniel’s mouth turns into a desert.

 _kewl_ and a thumbs up emoji as always and- oh Christ, there is no way of surviving this both sane and alive, if either. Daniel gets up and his gym-sculpted legs suddenly feel endlessly tremulous.

Max waits for him already at the door, behind a narrow opening that lets a sliver of lively light divide the dim corridor in two, once he gets downstairs; and Daniel is not ready and will never be. Max smiles his dry smile, fully opens the door to let Daniel in, Daniel does something like trying to return the amiable expression yet the muscles and nerve endings of his face are so numb with terror he isn’t sure whether he ever succeeds.  
“I ordered pizza, you want some?” Max asks, carelessly aiming the question at Daniel’s back and the floral pattern of his t-shirt while closing the door. And how can Max sound that fucking _normal_ still, when Daniel is about to completely wreck him, and himself, if he only pulls off not dying before it? How can Max be-

how can he be so-

Daniel is lost for all words except for the “nah, I’m good” he manages to utter as a polite refusal and he is almost afraid to simply look at Max again. He goes to lean against the bar table in what is meant to be a laid-back way, and he glances at Max

-

Daniel suddenly finds he has never thought about kissing Max as much as he has fantasized about fucking him ( _sounds extremely weird and fucked up again, now doesn’t it_ ). Yet.

“Beer? Water?” Max offers, pointing at the fridge as he walks back to the kitchen, closer to Daniel. Daniel can vaguely smell the half-eaten pizza and it mixes with the foul-feeling aftertaste of the beer he has already drank. The combination of those exact odours and flavours has never made him nauseous before.  
“Nah, I'm good”, he repeats with the pale cadence of a helpless automaton.  
“Okay, if you say so”, shrugs Max again, and _again_ in a voice that doesn't truly say anything. He glances at Daniel, there appears a minuscule crease between his brows, and Daniel feels as if the entirety of the universe that coils itself around him in white ribbons of countless stars had stopped its slow, eternal motion.  
“Is everything alright?”

_Let’s forget about this the best we can and move on._

“Nah, I'm-”

_If you can do that, I will do it as well._

Daniel chews and swallows back the rest of the sentence he is about to repeat for the third time like it was a physical reflex of his because he _is not fucking good_ if he finally is being honest with Max and himself. He can't stare anywhere anymore than in Max's eyes. The two shards of skies rip through him, stick to his throat, entwine him in a winter yet in warmth.  
“I just- I couldn't do it, y know”, Daniel stammers - barely beyond a breathless whisper, his words merely more than a glitch in the pattern of reality. Max stays still and Daniel feels the need to get it all out, out like the absolution he never got, lay all of his shamefulness in front of Max and accept anything and everything Max might mold them into. “And I can’t continue keeping this to myself without going completely insane sooner or later. I urged you to get over what I did to you like a proper fucking coward and I failed to do it myself. You’ve- fuck, you’ve been there ever since and in all the ways you really shouldn’t be. I tried, I tried all I could, but-”

Daniel feels inexplicably annoyed by the unwilled dry burn in the sockets of his eyes when he huffs _I couldn’t do it_ for the second time. That’s it. He lost. He quit his own god-forsaken game.

Nothing is betrayed by anything about Max. Not by his face, not by his words, not by his essence. Daniel compels himself to stay put despite the floodwave of alarm and horror crashing over him, filling his nose and mouth and windpipe, making him instinctively want to gasp for air. He witnesses more than actively watches the small nod Max gives him, and the full meaning of the movement is destined to soar above his scattered head at first.  
“I knew it would come to this”, Max states coolly, somehow from a distance. Not swaying, not attacking, still and resolute. “I have been kind of waiting for something like this ever since we talked, to be honest.”

Daniel malfunctions at once and thinks _he fucking hates my guts and I can't lay any blame on him for that_. His mind can’t fathom and his body shuts down.  
“I’m sorry, Max”, Daniel says and tilts his gaze down, feeling as if his heart was frequently convulsing in panic more than beating. “You’re a good guy and I wasn’t joking when I said that I like you a lot, it’s just… pretty unusual, I guess, for teammates and all. But naturally I chose to fuck it all up in a flash and now I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do ‘bout this.”  
He can't bear the sight of Max stepping forward to cross the empty space between them; the shimmer of his pallor and the warmth radiating from him melt Daniel like metal and make his whole being disappear in the glow of them. Max lays his palm on Daniel's bicep and the force with which the stern touch waves through Daniel is like a slap of an open hand.  
“If you want to be sorry for something”, says Max quietly, “then be sorry for escaping.”

Daniel freezes. His brain absolutely freezes. His mind still can’t fathom. He has played the conversation - or rather the assumed thrashing, verbal or physical, and his own mortifying defeat - he has scripted himself behind his eyes so many times that the situation not following the guidelines he has laid out to it suddenly feels like a plain inconvenient error.  
“What?” he blurts as he collects himself enough to look at Max again. So pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. But it is all he musters.  
“Do you honestly think that I _really_ thought that you could just forget?” Max asks and looks oddly... unmoved. _What the fuck is he playing at?_  
“It would be impossible”, elaborates Max over Daniel’s confusion - over the puzzlement that renders him blank and unable to do nothing but stare as Max peels himself, layer after layer, sentence after sentence. “There would just be no way of doing that, and I would say that I didn't really expect it from either you or me at all.”

“What’s-”

 _going on_ , finishes Daniel’s mind but his mouth simply refuses. And Max simply returns his perplexed stare. The wolf is there within him, and Daniel still vacillates before it like prey, certain that it is going to rip him to pieces yet somehow completely lost for any conviction at the same moment. He only weakly wonders why Max hasn't done or said anything _worse_ yet.  
“So you’re not… You don’t-” Daniel tries yet again. He feels ridiculously graceless for somehow jarring the thickening moment with his nonplussed stammering, diluting the density of the air they share and stir. But something like the need to pinch himself to find out whether it is all a spell uttered by his disintegrating mind still surfaces with force. And Max doesn't _flinch_.

“I was angry at you first, of course”, answers Max, straight and clean-cut, throwing Daniel even farther off with how he _sees_ him, through him. He knows Daniel’s questions without Daniel finishing them, with him barely having been able to even start asking them. “To be honest, I was a bit angry for some time because you just left me there like that after- well, using me. But then you came to talk to me and I could see that you were confused and scared more than anything else. And I realized that I understood it. Then I tried to ask you straight and I think you lied when you answered, so I decided to give you some time and see what would happen. And I would say that I guessed right.”

It finally, _finally_ starts to dawn in Daniel’s clouded horizon what Max means and what Max has done to _him_. 

“I think I just always knew that none of it would have ever happened if there had not been- anything behind it, you know”, Max continues, and his voice is suddenly darkens with hoarseness and it inexplicably sets Daniel ablaze along with the truths, brighter and brighter. “And I thought that you had realized that I would not have given in to you like that if there hadn’t been anything behind it. You should definitely know that it’s not in my nature.”

Daniel stares at him mouth ajar and eyes wide. He finds himself admiring Max immeasurably - the ice in his eyes, the recklessness and risk in him - and he finds himself fiercely wanting him more than ever before, more than in any of the lapses of his ridiculously imaginary, contrived self-composure. The arousal rising through his confusion and panic makes its way to his consciousness and suddenly almost aches.  
“You’re joking”, he stutters and falls silent. Max has taken Daniel’s own game and played it further than Daniel himself ever dared.

“What do you want from me?” repeats Max, and there is firmness to him that indisputably disarms Daniel and gracefully bends him to his knees. This is not how he expected _anything_ to go. And this is where Daniel knows that they will have to face what he has stubbornly refused to identify as desire, whatever the outcome. The words claw themselves out of his body as if they had been caught in a desolate trap within him.  
“More than I should, I reckon”, he whispers. The fight against the will to shut his eyes to avoid Max's has ended and turned upside down, making Daniel suddenly helplessly unable to tear his gaze off him. Max moves his hand to cup Daniel's jaw to place, and Daniel can't comprehend even whether he is breathing anymore. It's as if Max's air had taken the place of his own on his lips _he is so close why is he leaning so close all of a sudden-_  
“Can I?” asks Max, almost ludicrously blunt, somehow cramming what feels like the entire universe in one question. In two short-cut words.

Daniel surges forward to crash his lips on Max's as his answer. He lifts his hand to Max's shoulder, then perhaps somewhere to the back of his neck, to his cheek, anywhere he can lay his wishful touch on. He feels dizzyingly intoxicated - how _can_ he feel so mindlessly drunk with only four sips of beer in his system - how can the mellow feeling of Max's mouth on his own reel him so powerfully - how can the muffled sound Max makes against his lips feel so heavenly yet make his stomach sink at the same time? Daniel parts, opens his eyes ( _when did I close my eyes?_ ), pauses to look. Max looks back and his breath keeps replacing Daniel's and Daniel's breath keeps replacing his.  
“Yeah”, says Daniel then, using what feels like the last of his lungs to mold the word.

Max kisses him this time, makes both of them gasp for oxygen that doesn’t seem to exist any longer. He takes a hold of Daniel’s arms and then grabs the loose sleeves of his t-shirt, steps backwards and pulls Daniel along with him.  
“Where are we going?” manages Daniel to ask huskily. The words blend with the sounds of Max still trying to lick into his mouth. There are two meanings to the question and Daniel will come to think of the second one long afterwards.  
“Sofa”, puffs Max, half an order, half a suggestion, above all breathless desire. He keeps reversing in clumsy, uneven steps, pulling Daniel along until Daniel finally gets over himself enough to take the hint and guide Max to where told. He leans against Max and downs him gracelessly on the sofa with a loud thump, sits atop his thighs and keeps kissing and kissing and kissing, drinking in Max's taste and feel and

 _lust_. There is lust. Max’s lust, aimed at Daniel, sculpted around Daniel, sitting in Max’s hands roaming on his back. It feels unreal to Daniel - he can slide his hands across Max’s shoulders and down his arms, Max is right there in his grasp and still like an illusion. Daniel smiles against Max’s lips irrationally and then feels Max’s grip changing, trying to steer him to his right.

“Daniel, move, next to me”, Max pants, the words caressing Daniel’s chin. Daniel finds himself unwilling to shift. It means breaking the link between their bodies, it equals dismally snapping out of a reverie all too soon and finding it all an unreachable fantasy. It almost borders on fear of what perhaps follows. But there is no choice, of course, not with what he has made Max do already. He nods and agrees with a raspy _yeah, okay_ and reluctantly parts from Max’s chest - he glances at the endless slivers of sky gracefully circling Max’s pupils, glimmering and cool - he swallows thickly and climbs clumsily off Max, slumps on his left side, trying to stay as close as he can to not break the link.  
“I want to watch this time”, Max whispers to him and there is something like a wily smile suddenly flashing on his lips and twisting Daniel’s mind and gut.

Daniel can sense his own mouth gaping without a command. He can’t decide whether the sudden, ominous possibility of everything being in fact nothing but Max’s detailedly plotted revenge relieves or deflates him; and yet Max _asking_ to see him like that after everything takes him far enough beyond dread, far enough beyond abashment. He glances down and sees again the _familiar_ curvature Max’s erection creates on his jeans, _shit_ , how he would want to touch Max instead of himself.  
“Fuck, okay”, he stammers breathily in spite of all, to both himself and Max, and gets to fumbling his stiff trouser button open with uncooperative, shaking fingers. He has to look at what he is doing in order to ever succeed and thus catches Max hastily unzipping his own fly only as a fleeting movement in the corner of his vision but _Christ_ it still shoots all the way down his spine, from the nape of his neck to the cusp of his tailbone. Daniel fluctuates between the desire to keep his eyes on Max and the overpowering need to close them in order to be able to properly focus, and then Max’s eyes catch his again and hold him captive.

“I want to see”, urges Max again. His cadence is licentious, drenched in lust he makes no effort to conceal now. He keeps restlessly rubbing his own inner thigh, his thumb brushing the steeply arching bulge right next to his palm every now and then, and keeps Daniel’s gaze chained to his own. His mere proximity seems to be enough to drive Daniel to the brink of madness now, and then he leans closer and murmurs _I want to see what it looked like when you watched me_ and slides his hand through the opening of his own jeans, hisses, bites his lip. 

Daniel’s hand slopes down his stomach almost by itself, finds its way to the waistband of his already damp boxers, flickers there. Max is absolutely _filthy_ in a way Daniel could have never been able to picture in all his debaucheries, his hushed words alone are enough to shoot a pike of fire right through Daniel - and Daniel would laugh at himself if only he had the brains left to do anything but be gorged by Max’s stare and get ready to jerk himself off in front of him. _To_ him. What did he take Max for, really? A victim of Daniel’s depravity, giving and giving and giving, there for Daniel’s pleasure only like all the unreal objects in the flicks Daniel hasn’t tried to get himself off to in weeks? If anything, Max is there to take exactly what and how Daniel took when this hopeless, dark spiral of lust first pulled them into itself; and Daniel finds himself being able to do nothing but give in and wish.

Max’s heavy breathing rings in Daniel’s ears and his head twirls so fast he can’t help his eyes squeezing shut when he lays the first hesitant touch on his cock. The feeling of his hand trembling against it is almost _strange_ , and Daniel would comment on it if he wasn’t suddenly so terrified of breaking the fragile spell they’re under by speaking; so he slides his hand further down and whimpers involuntarily. There’s not enough room, how was he even able to jerk himself off to Max without taking the boxers off, _fuck_. He feels his own length girthy and hard against his palm and he seems so unsure about what to do about it it would make him downright cackle in any other moment than this.

Then Daniel hears the sounds of Max steadily hastening his strokes, the gradual scattering and hitching of his gasps. He realizes he _recognizes_ the noises. He has heard them before. Shit, he has _seen_ what Max does now. He moves his hand again, shifts his hips to get more space and funnels his fingers around his cock.  
“Fuck”, he hisses without thinking and then almost startles at having spoken. But the word makes no difference and breaks nothing - Max only gasps louder next to him, the sounds he makes are wet and coarse. Daniel thrusts against his own grip and envisions Max, and together they compose the hymn of lust Daniel has already imagined, melody after melody.  
“Your eyes weren’t closed”, Max whispers all of a sudden - breathless, tongue struggling to hold on to every word. “You watched me.”  
“ _Fuck_ -!”

Daniel’s eyes fly open that instant and he nails them on Max in something like desperation. He is getting close already - tides after tides of heat - the familiar peaks of voltage flit in him, creeping upwards and inwards along the lines of his body. And he sees Max like he has never seen before, eyes filled and lips parted with unsated, naked greed; cheeks torched bright red and hand drenched and glistening, getting himself off with rough pulls that wrench Daniel into their rhythm and beyond.  
“You like it?” Max pants just like in a shitty porno, and Daniel can see that he is on the verge of his orgasm as well, shaking to it-

Daniel collapses from so high above his head tilts back against the headrest on its own accord and he doesn’t even try to stifle the moan that flees him. His fingers are senseless, still moving like bewitched along his shaft without him really knowing it, (and _the warmth of the slick stains melts his skin and flesh like acid_ ). Shockwaves sway through him and make him grow languid, and through his weariness Daniel hears only Max’s ragged, torrential breaths. Max has come too. Next to him. The concept feels so strikingly different to what it was the first time it numbs Daniel into sheer shame - Max has gotten his revenge now, if that was what he sought after, and everything is ready to return to where it was. To not anything out of the ordinary.

Except that it never will.

Daniel stays still, limp cock in hand, eyes shut, almost scared of breathing. Max wipes his hand on his shorts, judging by the sound. _Nothing I haven’t done myself, y’ know._  
“Daniel”, calls a soft voice from Daniel’s right. _Oh no_. He bites the inside of his lip and bites it again when he finally scoots his hand out of his pants and lets it rest numbly on his stomach. Gluey, soiled, he doesn’t care. This is where he can’t change the channel, or pause and return to watch something else. This one he has to see through.

He opens his eyes. He swallows heavily. Max’s stare lays on him, serious and piercing. Daniel’s own pulse pounds deafeningly in his ears. Why did he do it? Why did _they_ do this? Why was it so easy to look at Max when he didn’t look back? Why does he have to want Max like this?

“Now we are even”, Max says. There’s a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth then, and it somehow makes Daniel feel inexplicably empty when he has no right to be that.  
“I reckon, yeah”, is Daniel’s reflexive answer. The emptiness rocks with anger - at himself, at Max, at this fucking mess. “You got your payback.”  
A streak of pensiveness slashes Max’s face as he leans closer; and Daniel first sees him raising his hand only from the corner of his eye before feeling the warmth of it on the side of his neck. Max circles his thumb clumsily across the coy crook. He looks dreamy in a way that somehow doesn’t match his assumed victoriousness.  
“That as well, yeah”, Max nods and lets the smile he has been holding back re-draw the lines of his mouth. “But I thought I already told you that I wanted you more.”

Daniel barely manages to take a breath in before Max’s lips touch his. It's gentle, asking for permission, asking for unneeded forgiveness. Daniel's eyes flutter closed and he sighs out of instinct, without caring about how unbelievably needy it most likely makes him sound. The truth is he somehow does need this. Max. Any part of this he can get, even though the reasons keep running from him.  
"I'm also hoping you won't escape me", Max says and locks their eyes once more. Still dreamy, the smile still sitting on his lips, his breath still replacing Daniel's and Daniel's still replacing his. "I would like it if you stayed this time."  
"I will", Daniel sighs and then finally lights with a spontaneous, sunny grin. Shit. Had he foreseen all this, he wouldn't have ran the last time. Had he foreseen all this, he also wouldn't have had to misuse the fucking pillow.

"I'll stay right here."

It's everything out of the ordinary now, how much closer the two of them have shifted, nullifying distances. Daniel bows forward again in search of another kiss, hopeful. And as he finds it - as he at last dares to lay his shaking hand on Max's thigh and feels Max's fingers grabbing it in a decisive hold - he doesn't know exactly why and what it all is and what they are, but he knows he would never want the universe to return to the ordinary and unvoiced it was before.  



End file.
